The Pickens sentinel. [volume] (Pickens, S.C.) 1871-1903, 1887-06-16
ABOUT DIRT ROADS
The Evil and Eemedy--The Economy of
Having Good Roads.
(FrOm The Nation1
About this time of wear Arnarioane bo

roads and road-making which is sadly
wanting during the rest of it. There is
probably no people in the world which
has made such progress in the arts of
civilized life generally that seems to care
SO little for what good many social
philosophers put among the very fore
most OF them, the art of road-making.
In fact, some philosophers have pro-
nounced the history of roads the history
OF civilization. Nothing distinguishes
civilized country from barbarous one
80 markedly as the difference between
the means OF communication between
one locality and another. As O general
rule, one knows that people is rising
In the scale by seeing its roads improve;
one knows that it is declining by seeing
its roads go out of repair Nothing
marked so vividly the great plunge into
Darbarlsm which Europe took after the
tau OF the Roman empire as tho disap-
pearance OF the superb lines of commu-
nlcatlon which led from the forum
straight as al arrow to every corner of
the Roman world. Nothing, too, tells
the tale OF Chinese decadence so dis
tlnctly as the ruin which has overtaken
the great roads and canals which at an
earlier period connected the capital with
the provinces. When an American goes
to Europe for the first time, nothing
seems odder thar the superiority of the
European roads in countries which can
make no pretence of equaling the United
States in other marks of material
progress. We are not declining peo-
pie; on the contrary we are tho most
growing people in the world. We arc
not among the poor nations Of the globe;
on the contrary we are probably the
very richest. We arc not Indifferent 20
material improvements; on the contrary
the most frequent charge made against
us is that we give too much attention to
1T, and yet wo are worse of, by far, in
the matter of roads than any other high
ly civilized community.
The original reason of the American
indifference about roads was probably
the rapidity with which the carly settlers
scattered themselves i'll small communi-
ties over wide areas. The fewer people
there are to the square mile of inhabited
territory, of course the costlier roads be-
come; and when population is very much
dispersed, as i'll frontier settlements,
people cease to think Of good roads rs
luxury within their reach, and devote
themselves simply to tho task of keeping
them passable. This tendency to neg
lect the art of rOad-making would prob
ably have disappeared early in this cen
tury If the railroads had not come in as
the great lines of communication, thrown
the post roads and IN; litary roads out Of
use, and relegated al roads but railroads
to the condition Of crossroads or by
ways. The railroads not only did this,
but they dispersed the settlers over still
wider areas than ever, and thus made the
prospect of running q good highway
past every mans door seem hopeless.
The consequence has been that the early
colonial or frontier state Of mind-in
which a road was considered good
enough if it was simply practicable to
wheeled vehicles Chat is, if there were
no holes or rocks in it sufficiently
formidable to upset q carriage), and any
thing better than this an unattainable
luxury almost settled into a national
tradition.
One has only to 60 few miles out of
any Of our largo cities to find the roads |
in every direction being repaired in the
exact manner in which they were re-
paired by the struggling colonists be-
tween 1890 and 1700-that is, nothing is
attempted beyond filling up tho holes
with any material that is at hand, and |
facilities for the water to run |
OFF, The material that is at hand is, OF
course, the mud of compost out of the |
ditch. This is shovelled up
with the utmost gravity and deposited |
all along the centre, filling up the cavi-
ties and hiding from view the projecting
rocks. In districts in which gravel or
strong clay is obtained in this way, the
result is often satisfactory enough. But
as a general rule the contents of the
ditch are simply mud or decaycd vegot-
able matter, fit only for manure. Spread
over the road as plaster, it rapidly be-
comes dust and is swept away by the
wind, or else becomes mud and is washed
back again into the ditch, or down into
the hollows, in which in wet weather it
forms q kind of quagmire, through
which horses toll wcarily The one ad-
vance we have made in this curious
process over the early colonists is the
invention of the large iron SCOOP or
shovel, worked by oxen or horses, as
substitute for the manual labor of the
oldcn days A foreigner, seeing it at
work Tor the first time, is always disposed
to believe that the road is being prepar-
ed for crop of somo kind, and as q
matter OF fact We have ourselves seen
many mile OF country road in which,
after the spring repairs, potatoes or corn
would have grown very luxuriantly.
Of course there are signs of progress
out OF this primitive condition in the
more densely settled districts on the
eastern coast and in tho neighborhood
of the large cities. The Park roads,
with which people have been made IA
miliar during the past thirty years, have
shown those who have never been abroad
what O. good road is, and have thus
raised the standard of road making, as
the Vienna bakery raised the standard of
bread making all over the country after
the Philadelphia exposition in 1877. But
most rural districts suffer greatly from
not having q standard at oil. Some of
those who tax themselves most freely
suffer most, because tho plentiful supply
of money not only does not improve the
roads, but breeds q political ring, who
treat it as "boodlc." The reason they
suffer is that, as they have no standard
Of goodness in roads, and do not make
specific requirements as to what shall be
done to keep the roads in order, it is
never possible to bring trustees, or
soiectmen, or roadmaaters, to o proper
Il